Portland Archbishop Alexander Sample confirmed one of Oregon's most infamous prisoners Wednesday in a heavily guarded private ceremony in the maximum security prison in Salem.

In 2007, Gary Haugen was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering a fellow inmate while serving a life sentence for the murder of his former girlfriend's mother. In November 2011, Haugen gained notoriety for dropping his appeals and asking to be executed.

"They said to each other, 'Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?' And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. ... Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread" (Luke 24: 32-33, 35).

The average American walks less than 3 miles per day, but a group of average Americans plan to walk 15 miles per day for 12 days in June. These folks aren't doing it for fitness; rather, they're walking 165 miles to protest drone warfare.

I walked ten miles yesterday with a dozen, spirited peace activists. We trekked from an obsolete, contaminated nuclear weapons assembly plant in Kansas City to a new, clean one, resting on an area the size of 14 football fields. The new weapons plant is being readied at the cost of $1.2 billion.